We are having problems with Trimble TSC3s running the latest versions of Trimble Access (2017.10) connecting to on several of our S Series Total Stations (S5, S6 & S7) via radio.
The problem ranges from taking 5-10 minutes to connect, or just will not connect at all.
Is there anyone else having similar issues? or is this a known issue?
Thanks Heinz.
Do you know if anyone from Trimble has acknowledged the problem?
I did send a report to Rob Koot and got this answer:
Peter's copy and paste of my comments to him on this don't seem to have come through, so here's what I said:
Hi Peter,
Until very recently we've not had any reports of this issue coming in through Support, so we've had nothing to investigate. We have had some reports very recently, and are trying to get more information to see if we can understand what is going on here, I'm hoping we'll have something to look at soon.
Replying to the questions about Auto connect to the Focus 30/35. In general if you never use this switch it off, that said, we did time test to S Series instruments with just the S Series enabled, as well as the Focus, and in all our testing it took up to about 15 seconds in all cases, regardless of whether Focus was on or off. If it's taking more than 20 seconds, then we'd love to get some comms traffic to analyse so we can understand what is going on. Again, the best people to work with on this are your distributors.
In the recent version of TA 2017.00 the Spectra Precision Focus30/35 robots were added. With this addition they was a check box added for them under settings/connect/auto connect. By default TA has all boxes checked. You will need to uncheck the Focus30/35 box. You may want to uncheck the 5600 box as well if you are only using S-Series instruments. This should help improve communication/connection times.
This is working for us.
Pete
Pete, can you please clarify.
Do you believe switching off the Focus helped? And you are running 2017.10 and not having connection problems when the auto-connect to Focus is off?
As per my comments above, we are not able to reproduce this here, so I'm keen to get some confirmation from you on this to help us investigate what is going on here.
Thanks
Rob
Rob, I am a Geospatial sales and Tech support rep with Seiler Instrument, a Trimble distributor in the US, and would be happy to discuss some of our findings regarding this issue. This has resolved the problem with several of our customers.
Todd, thanks for the message, and good chatting to you just now.
We'll run some more tests here this week and try again to reproduce, if we're still unsuccessful I'll drop Kelly an email and see if we can get some more info to help track this down.
Cheers
Rob
Hi Rob,
for me it has resolved that issue. I did ask my colleges and no one else has this issue anymore. And issue was with 2017.00 and 2017.10
I can reproduce the issue by just ticking the box for FOCUS 30/35
Ed Habab mentioned a firmware update for the radio in the TSC3. How can I find the firmware version for the TSC3 radio?
Anyway we will have to send my TSC3 for a service anyway.
Pete
Hi Pete,
Thanks heaps for the extra info you provided by email - that really helped, and we have now been able to reproduce the problem getting connected to the Instrument and are working on fixing this.
As previously stated the issue is resolved by disabling auto-connect to the Focus.
If the instrument was powered up and ready before starting the controller, then the connection problem wasn't experienced either.
Really appreciate your help here, thanks.
Cheers
Rob
I have updated several TSC3 FW from 3.0.2 to 3.1.2 and some of my customer connectivity issue were resolved when connecting to Total Stations after this.
Tony
There was a Service Bulletin about the radio module...If you have version G, K, Q and has 5.58 firmware then you maybe entitled for a warranty repair. You can bring your TSC3 to a service provider and have the module check.
This had been an issue when Trimble switched from Cirronet to Murata.
In my case problem was that device lost connection every time when it was covered by my body or tree etc.
I've reinstalled OS for TSC3 and changed radio antena to the new one.
The problem was solved and Access version had no influence.
I thought I had damaged the original TSC3 antenna, thought it couldn't be the S6 as it had just had annual service with no communications issues reported. Purchased latest antenna, replaced & completed job with no more dropouts.
We do have the same issue and it is related also to earlier versions of TA.
I only came across this issue, when I could work with an assistant. With an assistant I can switch on the controller, before he is finished with the setup of the station. Only than I had this issue. Understanding this I found the following work around:
Set up the station and wait until the station is ready to connect (shows radio channel and network ID). Only then switch on the controller with TA. This error can be reproduced most of the time by switching on the controller first.